It Never Goes Away

Now tell me, what springs to mind when I say, "Family holiday at the beach"?

Well, yes, there is the whining and the shouting, and the rain, and the endless card games with the nine year old, yes, but I was particularly thinking of the washing when you return home. The loads, and loads, and yet more loads of it. More washing by volume than the amount of clothing that we own. It is an extraordinary, and probably immutable law of nature, a suspension of the law of conservation of matter, only observed on the return home from a family holiday.

Never mind. There was also the vast expanse of wild empty sand that is your typical Tassie beach:

Encounters with oyster catchers:

Kite flying between showers and gales:

Catching mini crabs and having races with them - see all the bumps in the sand? Every one a mini crab burrow. And as many seagulls as Posy could chase, and seagulls being blown across the sand sideways in the wind, which is always amusing. Did I mention the wind?

Equinoctial gales still in full force.

Then after mountains of washing there is the prospect of restocking the pantry, because of course the other thing that family holidays mean is mountains of food. I swear I cooked for a week before we left, and the car was packed to the gunwhales, mostly with food (and books!) but now we somehow need another mountain of food.

I met Fran (serendipitously!) at the wholefoods shop, and we caught up on news. She is going to share her chooky eggs with me. Thanks Fran! Then I bumped into her again in the carpark at the vegie shop, because it's that kind of town, but I had to run along to be home in time to meet Posy when she got in from school.

Here is my slowly-heading-towards-plastic-free shop this week:

What I am lacking now is produce bags. I am tossing up between ordering recycled polypropylene mesh bags and making my own out of compostable cotton. Because I am a terrible procrastinator, I know that my chances of actually making bags are very, very slim. However, The Girl may make them for me for Christmas. If I am good. I could order the Onya bags today (recycled! Made in Australia!), but they can't be recycled again. I did email the owner, and he did let me know that he is still using the very first bags they ever made, some years ago. So that is good news.... probably a pointless argument using up precious head space, especially as I still drive a car everywhere. In the meantime, I reuse plastic produce bags which I (mostly) remember to take with me. And I reuse brown paper bags at the wholefoods shop, but yesterday I forgot, so had to use new ones to add to my large collection.

Here is a low waste shopping trip I read about this morning when I finally began reading the internet again. What do you know? It's still here!

Tip of the day: I just had lunch with a friend, who served up a yummy slow-cooked 'fridge-forage' soup with white beans and tomatoes as a base, and BRILLIANT touch - she lightly steams greens from the garden, chops them and stores covered in the fridge, then stirs a spoonful into the hot soup, so you get lovely bright greens in reheated soup, not old nasty brown greens, which is what I generally serve up the day after.